Being a full time consultant is wonderful – I have the opportunity to work with hundreds of interesting clients, tackle unusual and cutting edge projects, and yes, get paid for it. But there is a drawback – although I’m in contact with dozens of people every week via phone, email, Skype, and Twitter, I don’t actually see them. I’m here in Iowa, and they’re…well, all over the world.

As noted in previous posts, I’ve been thinking lately about what makes a job board good – or not. Below are a few questions to that effect – and yes, some employment sites have these features, but most do not. Maybe there absent features you’ve wondered about?

Are these really the dog days of summer? Maybe not, judging from the number of new job sites I’m seeing. Granted, some of these have been around in alpha or beta for a while, some have been flying under the radar, and some are simply new to me – but there seems to be no letup in the volume of start-ups in the online recruiting sector.

This is great, in my opinion. Startups force established players to rethink how they do business. They…

A few weeks back I posed the question“What is a job board?”. In the process of trying to answer that question, I mentioned LinkedIn as a prime example of something thatlooks like a job board, acts like a job board, butclaims not to be a job…

I recently had the privilege of hosting #HFChat – the HireFriday Tweet-fest organized by @HRMargo and @CyndyTrivella. HireFriday is all about helping job seekers find work. Recruiters, HR professionals, and the occasional job board doctor pose and answer common questions about the job hunt. It’s a wonderful event for all involved.

My subject – surprisingly enough! – was “Making job boards work for you”. The conversation ranged from the basics (setting up job alerts, using job boards…

Last week I read a post about how social media killed job boards (yes, again!). Whether or not you agree with the argument (and as you can surmise, I don’t), the piece inadvertently brings up a larger issue: are job boards still relevant to job seekers? After all, this is all about the job seeker, right? Many social media evangelists would have you…

I’ve worked with dozens of job boards over the years, and I often take a look at what the job seekers are saying to them. Since the onset of the recession (and honestly, before), it goes something like this:

“Why don’t you have any jobs in my area?”

“I’ve had my resume posted on your site for months and you haven’t called me.”

“I’ve been working in my field for twenty years but you don’t have a single job for me??”

“You say you want a revolution, well, you know, we’re all doing what we can.” – The Beatles

“We’re pinheads all, jocko homo.” -DEVO

These lyrics really get to the two extremes of what recruiters, employers, and job seekers think might happen with job boards. On the one hand, there are those who think job boards are on the way out, ‘devolving’ into lowest common denominator sites that carry fake jobs and offer little…

Do you ever feel like your head will burst if you have to create or remember another login/password combo? Sure, your browser tries to help (at least mine does), prompting helpfully to ‘remember’ the login – usually. But that’s specific to your computer. What happens when you’re away from it? If you’re like me, you try to stick to a few combos and keep them in your head.

So what does this have to do with job boards and career sites? Plenty. If you use…

The times they are a-changin’ – and Mr. Zimmerman never even envisioned the internet, much less job boards. One way or another I end up looking at a lot of online recruitment sites – some aimed at employers, some at job seekers, some at who knows what. Examining sites is, in my opinion, extremely worthwhile – there are always ideas to ‘borrow’ and ideas to avoid. So, without further ado, let’s go on a

1) You obsessively pored through each line of the newspaper classifieds, looking for something that might match your skills. (You might even do this with multiple newspapers, depending on where you lived.)

2) You walked from office to office, filled out application forms – either for actual jobs, or so that you were ‘on file’.

3) You had special ‘resume paper’ and matching envelopes to send out –… Continue

In my experience, I’ve found that programmers often expect people to act linearly – going from point A to point B, logically and inexorably marching forward, until they reach their goal.

People don’t usually act that way. They use nutty search terms. They randomly click on ads. They open new browser windows and forget what they were originally looking for. They fail to notice some buttons and features, yet become fixated on others.…